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Re: Appropriate to use textarea to display text?

for

From: Randy Pearson
Date: Apr 30, 2005 3:00PM


Accessibility notwithstanding, I don't think it's even valid markup to use a
TEXTAREA outside of a FORM.

That aside, your concern seems appropriate. Most likely the TEXTAREA was
used for no other purpose than to create a scrolling effect, so that lengthy
text would not push the "I Agree" links off the page. But that effect can be
achieved by placing the content in a DIV element and using CSS to size the
DIV and use "overflow: scroll;" to (nearly) duplicate the textarea
look/feel.

-- Randy


>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Don Hinshaw
>> Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 4:08 PM
>>
>> I am updating an existing site and they currently use a textarea to
>> display "terms of use" information. It seems like that could be
>> potentially confusing -- a visitor using a screen reader might think
>> they were in a form they were required to input text to.
>> Is it an acceptable use? I am inclined to place a link next
>> to a check box ...